With support from the Andes Amazon Fund, CSF conducted an analysis on multiplier effects of tourism spending in Peru’s national parks. Peru has created eleven national parks and numerous other protected areas in its Andes Amazon region covering approximately 18 million hectares. While efforts are currently under way to address existing funding gaps, the long term financial sustainability of Peru’s protected areas requires a substantial, long-term increase in allocation of public funds. Furthermore, Peru’s biological importance justifies expansion of the existing protected area system in the Andes Amazon, further increasing funding required.

Colombia has the greatest bird diversity in the world. Approximately 1,900 bird species have been registered, equivalent to 20% of all species globally. This wealth in species highlights a tremendous potential for birding tourism. Current efforts by the Colombian government to increase security and end decades of armed conflict, as well as to promote ecotourism, can help position the country as one of the most important birding destinations in the world.

In December 2014, Peru's Ministry of the Environment made a major policy announcement in a ministerial resolution that established guidelines for developers to offset the residual impacts of their projects. The policy was several years in the making and the product of exhaustive analysis on the part of ministry staff and important policy support from CSF and several other organizations, including the Peruvian Society for Environmental Law, The Nature Conservancy and the Wildlife Conservation Society.

On January 15th 2014, together with 6 other passengers and 3 crewmembers, I embarked on the polar sailing yacht Kotik to the Antarctic Peninsula.

It all started in the beginning of 2012, when an old friend of mine, historian and photographer João Paulo Barbosa, invited me to go to Antarctica to try and summit Mount Rio Branco. A 976 meter-high mountain that rises west of Cape Perez at the entrance of Beascochea Bay, it is thought of as one of the most beautiful, fascinating and unexplored regions of the Antarctic Peninsula.